<p>im not sure how many Ojai people have posted on this thread, but I think its only like 2 or 3
for some reason the majority is heading to socorro; I picked it cuz I wanted to visit New Mexico, a place that I would probably never go to otherwise
ok food doesn't sound too bad, and it was never too big of a concern for me, so ill survive. who knows, I have a tendency of liking food that others detest, sorta weird
wow a 2 hour problem, that sounds insane, what type of problem was that?
and of course, thanks to everyone for sharing your bountiful knowledge</p>
<p>Hey everybody, I'm another Socorro SSPer that can help to answer questions (I couldn't let Geeta, Matt and Josh have all the fun). Seeing as a lot of the major issues have already been addressed, I'll just add that although the food isn't too good, it is bearable. As for the type of problems that you have for homework, the longer ones are for astronomy and the physics prof gave more frequent but usually less involved problem sets. But I really wouldn't stress about the problem sets, because they are really a lot of fun to do, especially when you're working in a group - I found that the work we had to do there was way more fun than the kind of homework you get at school. I hope that helps.
-Danny J</p>
<p>Ooh, thank you, SSP alumni, for answering questions... You guys are awesome :-)</p>
<p>I'm thinking I'll just bring lots of pecans with me for food (I'm a pecan-freak). I'm sometimes a bit picky... so long as they have salad and stuff I'll be okay.</p>
<p>I can't wait until spherical trigonometry!!! That sounds awesome!!! lol, I know, I'm crazy. I don't think the physics will be too bad for me since I took it last year at my high school. Astronomy-wise, do you get really in depth into cool stuff...? Like star evolution, and nebulae, and spectroscopy, and stuff, to mention some totally random things? Or is it mostly oriented around the asteroid orbital calculation?</p>
<p>I was astonished that someone had turned down RSI for SSP, but quite pleased as well... :-) It makes it sound that much cooler. I only have a few weeks left, I can't wait!!!!!</p>
<p>Wow, answers galore. Once again, thank you guys for posting here. SSP sounds even better now. Even though the food was rated the worst (which sort of scared me), I think I can bear it. Hmm...let's see. Okay here are some more questions.</p>
<p>What did you guys do for fun? I read that the gym and campus facilities were open for use. Is there a basketball court? Did you guys ever go swimming? I am so curious about the campus. It seems like a cool place. </p>
<p>Do you guys have any tips on what to bring? or bring extra of?</p>
<p>Thank you guys so much. I hope you guys can come to the SSP reunion, I would love to meet you guys. </p>
<p>Allen</p>
<p>@tweetlewoot: o you go much farther than that in astronomy. . . .least I remember thinking so. . . .but in an case yeah you go through all that and a crapload of other awesome random stuff. . . .a lot of it is sort of centered round orbit calculation but i thoguht the other random stuff was wayyy aweosmer. . . . .</p>
<p>@Ladros: yeah ssp is oosome :-D, there is a basketball court, and a swimming pool. . . .the group I hung out with never hung out in the gym cept the day it got left open and we went in and played at like 1 AM. . . . .(shhhhhh;) ). . . .about every day someone was down at the pool hanging out at some time. . . . stuff to bring? uhhh</p>
<p>frisbee
money
film/memory cards
calculator
random snack foods (as a group we ended up liking wheat thins and swedish fish. . . .we were so communistic, i remember everyone juss leaving the food on the table for anyone to eat lol)
uhhhh detergent and soap. . . quarters for the washer/dryer!
Flashlight and batteries. . . .
most of these are prolly listed. . . lemme see if i canthink of any interesting ones. . . .
Surge protector! we didnt have one and a few times we didnt have the space to plug stuff in. . . .
a big radio like device with speakers so everyone can hear and one of those cords to connect MP3 players to those kind of radios. . . . . .
gifts for reunionees
a blanket you can put on the ground</p>
<p>thats all i can think of ATM. . . . .</p>
<p>ey ketchupboy, do they have basketballs available for you at the campus? or do i have to somehow bring my own....
and as for the gifts, do you think poisonous tarantulas will suffice? or do reunionees typically enjoy poisonous snakes even more?
hehe again thanks for ur help</p>
<p>OK well I am another person from SSP (Socorro) last summer. I heard that Geeta found people who are going to SSP this year and I had to tag along after her! I hope it's not getting too crowded, but this is exciting. It's like anticipating SSP all over again.</p>
<p>Just something random to say. Rolls of quarters are really nice to bring for the laundry. However, be careful on the plane, because if you take the rolls of quarters in, say, a backpack, then they'll set off all sorts of bells and whistles at the security and they'll dig around all through your bag at the cost of valuable time. That is what made me miss my plane last year! I did manage to get there somehow though, and SSP is really really great!</p>
<p>-Mary</p>
<p>Hey...I'm yet another SSP (Socorro) Alumni. Another thing that should be added to Matt's list is a FAN...especially if you're a girl (like me), because the girls' floor is hotter than the guys'. Even though my roommate (who was Geeta) brought a fan, there was this one night when the fan wasn't quite hitting me...and it got so hot that I ended up pouring water all over myself to stay cool. So, bring your own climate control, because the dorm doesn't have it.</p>
<p>Well, I'll answer the questions that were directed at Matt, because I'm bored. Basketballs are available on campus, and basically all sports equipment except tennis rackets and golf clubs.</p>
<p>Wow, two more of you guys! Thanks for the info. Much appreciated.</p>
<p>Hmm..let's see...ok I got one.</p>
<p>Any tips on how to guide the telescope/astrograph (not up with my terminology yet...)? I heard this can be difficult.</p>
<p>Cool. I wonder how different SSP Ojai will be from Socorro. Hopefully, they'll have some sort of air conditioning in the dorms.</p>
<p><em>is from Taiwan and can't live without A/C</em></p>
<p>Tips on the astrograph...um...use great care. If you wear glasses, contacts are a good thing to bring, because you have to essentially stick your eyeball into the eyepiece to be able to see enough to guide.
Also, people with long eyelashes, beware.
Video gamers will have an easier time with the controls. You essentially have to use something like an XboX controller to shift the telescope to follow the earth's rotation and keep your guide star in the same place. The telescope does this fairly well, but it does need your help occasionally.
I guess just extreme attention to detail. I can't wait to hear all the telescope horror stories coming out of the other SSP alums, though. Trust me, there are lots of panic moments in the dome.</p>
<p>Bah, Geeta should have made me come over here sooner. SSP discussion should not proceed without me. I'm also from Socorro '04, and there's not a chance of me going through 23 pages of this post, but I'll answer any questions from here on out. I'll just rave for now.</p>
<p>SSP was the best experience I could possibly have had last summer, and I'm rating it now as one of the highest points in my life. It changed my life, yadda yadda. I know no one ever really believes people who say these things, but it's true. Going back to High School afterwards was tough. My memory doesn't normally last more than an hour or two, but I still remember most everything about and have loads of stories from SSP. Talking to people at school nowadays, it seems like any conversation I'm in will have to include me refrencing something from SSP, much to the annoyance of those who are around me frequently. I count some SSPers as my closest friends still; the people I'd known for years in high school don't compare.</p>
<p>I'm not normally very amiable, but out of the 35 other students at SSP, there were perhaps one or two whom I didn't like. I'm one of the more asocial people you could meet, but I'll still define SSP as a wonderful social experience, likely the best I've ever had. It was also great academically, both interesting and challenging. I hope college can even remotely compare. That's even despite astronomy being only a secondary interest to me (I'm computer science through and through).</p>
<p>Alright, that's enough propoganda. I'll bookmark this page and check back occasionally and see if have have anything worth adding. I'm jealous of those of you who are going :(</p>
<p>-Erik</p>
<p>OK I have to echo some of Erik's comments... It was indeed hard to go back to high school after SSP. I sat in the room in our first class and it seemed... sort of bland, although I'm still friends with them.</p>
<p>When you see things on SSP's website that say "This was the best time of my life!" or something like that, they are seriously telling the real truth! Well, at least it was the best 6 weeks of my life. </p>
<p>About the telescope, your main worry should be the weather. Last year we had a considerable number of thunderstorms and other such cloudy weather, and if you can't see the stars, there's nothing you can do about it. </p>
<p>Also, handle the equipment with care! Once when we went observing, one of the eyepieces (the one that had illuminated crosshairs so we could center the guiding star) was broken- at least, the light-up crosshairs wouldn't light up. It was a pity, since we had a clear night. So we did everything as normal and I guided the telescope without the crosshairs. Well, the crosshairs did light up a smidget, but not very much. Nope, didn't work. I was straining my eye so much to see the star (which wasn't very bright) that I kept imagining it, and so I would center the imagined star on what looked like the center of the crosshairs... anyway, the photograph turned out and all the stars looked like tiny Fs! (ie, a plate that can't be measured). That brings me to another point- if something like that happens, the telescope can guide itself quite well on its own (one of the TAs told us that 1 out of every 3 plates that is not guided by a person comes out measurable). One night my team set up the telescope, did everything, and we were about to expose the film when the thin cloud cover became too thick to see the guiding star through the eyepiece. So, we just let the telescope alone, didn't guide it- and, lo and behold, the plate turned out measurable! The stars were a little faint, though. But don't do that if you actually can see the star, because the telescope's not perfect.
And if you're guiding the astrograph- concentrate! practise beforehand for a minute or two! And if one of your teammates is guiding it- don't bug him/her because he/she is concentrating (and do your job so it all runs smoothly)!</p>
<p>Geeta is right- contacts are much much more preferable than glasses when you're guiding.</p>
<p>And one more thing to echo Erik- I am also jealous of everyone who is going to SSP! Hmmm, though I am glad to go to college finally.</p>
<p>-Mary</p>
<p>Yup, SSP is a ton of fun. You'll see when you get there.</p>
<p>As far as the telescope goes, like Mary said the weather can be a really big problem, although I didn't have a problem with my glasses - I just took them off and refocused the eyepiece. The TA's are there when you're observing though and they show you how to do everything, which will probably be more help than anything we can write. And the TA's are awesome and really helpful. They hold study sessions and stuff that I would suggest going to if you're lost in class. And like Geeta said, there are some panic sessions in the dome. My personal favorite was when I started feeling queasy halfway through an exposure I was guiding, and that plate didn't come out too bad either. Fond memories...</p>
<p>-Danny</p>
<p>socorro >>>>> ojai</p>
<p>(mwhaha)</p>
<p>i can answer questions, too...(as if there aren't enough of us on this thread, hehe)</p>
<p>"socorro >>>>> ojai"</p>
<p>Well, duh.</p>
<p>Everyone stopped talking right when I showed up :(</p>
<p>i'm going to ojai; is it really ojai <<<<< socorro, or is it just your pride in socorro?</p>
<p>It's known that Socorro is better than Ojai, so yeah. (Only kidding of course) :) :)</p>
<p>Less than two weeks left. How many of you guys started packing yet? I bought a new digital camera, which I hope will come by the time I leave. Now gotta go shopping for the rest of my stuff.</p>
<p>Question for old SSPers:</p>
<p>At Socorro, how strict is the dress code during dinner? Is it just like..polo shirts with slacks? More strict? Less strict? Thx for all the guys, really appreciate it.</p>
<p>ive basically bought all my stuff, just need a 512mb memory card for my camera
i even got my logo-less polo shirts from nordstrom rack, amazing deals over there</p>
<p>i also would like to know about the dress code at dinner. these are probably stupid questions but im going to ask them anyways... first of all, what is the exact dress code? how strict are they about it? and so do you actually change clothes in the middle of the day to go to dinner, then an hour later change back?
anything else about the dress code i forgot?
i'm sure the two campuses are about the same so even though im going to the ojai campus, anyone's answer is welcome.</p>